By CLAUDIA ROWE, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, June 26, 2008

Though police and outreach workers acknowledge that Seattle has long had a problem with juvenile prostitution, a new report states that hundreds of girls are working the streets with little or no substantive help from authorities.

They are teens like Bella, 16, already arrested numerous times for prostitution and other crimes, who told a social worker that her pimp makes her work 20 hours a day without food, according to the report.

"She says he beats her, spits on her and does not allow her to look up -- ever. To cement his control, he forces her to walk naked in front of his friends. The pimp's name is tattooed on her neck."

The report, "Who Pays the Price? Assessment of Youth Involvement in Prostitution in Seattle," is Seattle's first attempt in decades to quantify a notoriously elusive population. And while its author, Debra Boyer, notes that her figures -- culled from case studies and police reports -- are conservative estimates, she is razor sharp about the dearth of services available here for prostituted youths.

"I don't even know how to ask them these questions," one social worker admitted.

Bella, who has been in and out of juvenile detention, is well known to authorities but never seems to get help. She is among 238 adolescents who engaged in prostitution during the past year, according to the report, which was commissioned by the city's Department of Human Services and presented at a forum Thursday.

"The inadequacy of community services for the population of youth who have come to the attention of the juvenile justice system is nothing less than shocking," wrote Boyer, a cultural anthropologist who has been studying street life for two decades. "Whose problem is it when a 12-year-old is being prostituted?"

More and more, she added, the girls have pimps who are affiliated with street gangs.

At the forum, about 60 outreach workers, defense attorneys, prosecutors and police officers listened, often nodding in agreement as Boyer unveiled her findings. Eileen Corcoran, who does outreach on Pacific Highway, said she sees ever more girls who are ever younger.

Terri Kimball, director of the city's Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention Division, vowed to do more to combat the problem.

"In spite of raising the issue over the past decades in a variety of ways," she said, "we cannot get ahead of this problem. Little, if anything, has changed for most of these youth."

The question now: What to do about it?

The report makes several recommendations aimed at city officials, chief among them: secure housing with recovery services, improved coordination among existing outreach programs and increased fines for clients, or "johns." The standard penalty now is $500.

The Mayor's Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Boyer's study comes at a time of renewed national attention to the problem. On Wednesday, federal investigators rounded up about 300 pimps and others accused of forcing children into prostitution in 17 cities. Seattle was not among them, though Las Vegas -- a hot spot where many youths recruited here have worked -- was on the list.

Boyer also railed against local laws that classify juvenile prostitutes as criminals -- despite international protocols that make plain their status as victims.

"I do not think we can have it both ways," she said. "How is it that multiple services become available for women and girls out of the country, but not here?"

Her research involved combing through the case files of 1,528 youths, 15 percent of whom noted involvement with prostitution.

On average, they started at age 14, and the vast majority had been sexually victimized at home. Street life simply extended the pattern.

"I believed I had to accept this life -- this is what was dealt me," one young woman told Boyer, describing her fear of the pimp who controlled her days. "Someone had to prove I could go somewhere he couldn't get at me. Do you really have somewhere I could go?"